Towards a Better Accounting of the Roles of Body, Things and Habits in Consumption

TL;DRAbstract

This paper explores a theory of strong and weak habits and its implications for renewing sustainable consumption research and policy agendas.An argument is made that the strength of a habit is related not only to the degree of repetition of a performance or task, but also to the particular nature of the socio-cultural and material contexts associated with the habit.The concept 'distributed agency' is applied to the task of distinguishing the sources of agency in habit formation and change.Social learning theory is introduced as a source of new thinking on how energy-intensive consumption habits can be changed.

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